


when soft and sweet (yet hard and bleak)

by hikaie



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Drabble, F/M, Introspection, Pining, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 00:06:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18727624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hikaie/pseuds/hikaie
Summary: “You’re every bit as good as them.”She’d said, once. But that was the thing, wasn’t it?They weren’t very good, either.





	when soft and sweet (yet hard and bleak)

**Author's Note:**

> Got dragged into watching this show and it's taking me apart piece by piece! Had a lot of Daryl/Carol feelings during s5e1 so I got them out in this little drabble. I think I might continue this as a kind of series later on because I'm sure I'll want to write more of them.

The day has been long, but so have the last couple hundred days or so. Life is long, now; bearing down with it’s shortness it turns the hours lengthy. The human condition was always to die, except… well. The reminder of it hadn’t always been so much in his face as it was now.

There’s still a low campfire through the trees. He tries not to listen to the way Maggie and Glenn are shifting in the leave a couple yards away; they try and keep quiet, so he really doesn’t mind. This is life now. Instead he focuses on Carol, alive and breathing and warm beside him. Their savior. _His_ savior. He watches the warm light play off her face, easy to see in the low flames if he props his chin on his crossbow stock and pays close attention.

He knows something happened. More than what she did at the prison; he knows between Rick leaving her and Terminus, another thing has chipped away at who she used to be. He still remembers that mousy woman, so afraid, so fragile. In one way she’s the same- her eyes. Clear, bright eyes; they’d been haunted long before the end of the world. They’d been a little distant as long as he’d known her. Daryl curls his toes in his boots and she speaks.

“I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to forget.”

He works his jaw. _“You’re every bit as good as them.”_ She’d said, once. But that was the thing, wasn’t it?

_They_ weren’t very good, either.

He endeavors to try, at the very least. To be less the man that had turned her away so often in the beginning. He's lost her twice. Well, maybe only really once, but he can’t stand the idea of a third time. Not after this time. Not after Merle, time and time again. Not after Beth, too.

“Okay.” He finally says, softly.

Then comes the snapping of twigs, the feeling of eyes crawling over his skin. Even when he’s more than marginally sure nothing is there he’s on edge, too much, so that he stands against the tree trunk instead of sitting back down. Carol sinks back into her position against her own tree. They pass the few hours of watch like this, in companionable silence.

Glenn and Maggie trade off with them, eventually. Carol accepts his hand up when he offers it, and they trudge through the brush and fallen leaves to the ratty pallet the other pair had vacated. He settles on the edge of the blanket, with his meager belongings stuffed under his head and his crossbow at hand. She lays beside him- not close, but _near_. His eyes adjust to the dark and he looks his fill: the curve of her neck, the sharp jut of her shoulder, the line of her torso that dips up just slightly at her hip and goes down, down her thighs and calves. She has, perhaps, a delicate bone structure, but anyone would be a fool to think that makes _her_ delicate. She’s strong.

“I missed you.” He says, into the dark, to her turned back. It’s easier. It’s always been easier to speak his mind with her. Then he looks up, to where the branches sway, to the sky and the stars beyond and he holds his breath.

“I know.” Her voice floats up to meet him. He closes his eyes and exhales. “I missed you, too.”

_She’s strong_. He’d known she would make it, out there. The hard part had been accepting that he would know she was out there, somewhere; probably alone. If not alone then running the show, but still- no one at her side. It wouldn’t be like here, with them, with her _family_. She belonged with them. Fate had shit on Daryl Dixon a lot in his life, a heaping load more in the past year alone, but if it had done one thing right by him it was her. Bringing her back. It was selfish, probably. (Privately he thought he deserved to be a little selfish.)

“’Night.” He says gruffly, after a long moment of searching for the right thing to say and coming up empty handed. She murmurs in response. Sleep doesn’t often come easy, but as her breathing evens out beside him he finds himself drifting off, exhausted and more at ease than he has been since the prison went down. Things are okay, now that she’s back.

Things will be okay.


End file.
